page_title: Wabash College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wabash College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Caleb Mills, yellow, daguerreotype
context_page_description: Wabash College is a private, men's liberal arts college in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Founded in 1832 by several Dartmouth College graduates and Midwestern leaders, it enrolls nearly 900 students. The college offers an undergraduate liberal arts curriculum in three academic divisions with 39 majors.
context_section_description: The college was initially named "The Wabash Teachers Seminary and Manual Labor College", a name shortened to its current form by 1851. Many of the founders were Presbyterian ministers, yet nevertheless believed that Wabash should be independent and non-sectarian. Patterning it after the liberal arts colleges of New England, they resolved "that the institution be at first a classical and English high school, rising into a college as soon as the wants of the country demand."
  Among these ministers was Caleb Mills, who became Wabash College's first faculty member. Dedicated to education in the then-primitive Mississippi Valley area, he would come to be known as the father of the Indiana public education system.
  Elihu W. Baldwin, the first president of the college, served from 1835 until 1840. He came from a church in New York City and accepted the presidency even though he knew that Wabash was at that time threatened with bankruptcy. After his death, he was succeeded by Charles White, a graduate of Dartmouth College and the brother-in-law of Rev. Edmund Otis Hovey (1801–1877), a professor at the college. Joseph F. Tuttle, who became president of Wabash College in 1862 and served for 30 years, worked with his administrators to improve town-gown relations in Crawfordsville. Gronert described him "an eloquent preacher, a sound administrator and an astute handler of public relations." He is the namesake of Tuttle Grade School in Crawfordsville (1906) and Tuttle Junior High School, now Tuttle Middle School (1960). Dr. Scott E. Feller, Dean of the College from 2014-2020 and chemistry professor at Wabash since 1998, became the 17th President of Wabash College on July 1, 2020.
  During World War II, Wabash College was one of 131 colleges and universities offered students a path to a Navy commission as part of the V-12 Navy College Training Program.
  In the early 1900s, the college closed its "Preparatory School", which prepared incoming students from less-rigorous rural high schools that lacked the courses required for entrance to the College.
  In 1996, Wabash became the first college in America to stage Tony Kushner's Angels in America.
caption: Caleb Mills, founder and first faculty member of the College
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